Insights Driving Superior Outcomes with Haleon's Sammi Zola & Pete Fox plus Kroger Precision Marketing's Andrew Butz

Summary

Podcast Summary: The CPG Guys

Episode: Insights Driving Superior Outcomes with Haleon's Sammi Zola & Pete Fox + Kroger Precision Marketing's Andrew Butz
Date: May 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The CPG Guys, recorded onsite at Kroger’s 8451 office in Cincinnati, brings together leaders from health & wellness giant Haleon and Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) to explore how cutting-edge insights are shaping superior outcomes in fast-evolving retail and media environments. Hosts Peter V.S. Bond and Sri Rajagopalan guide a roundtable focused on:

• The increasing urgency for speed and precision in responding to consumer insights
• How AI (particularly the new “Agent Monday”) is transforming the workflow and impact of category management, shopper marketing, and retail media
• Collaboration and breaking down functional silos between brands and retailers for real-time activation

Guests:

• Sammi Zola – Director of Shopper Marketing, Mega Channel, Haleon
• Pete Fox – Category Strategy Manager, Haleon
• Andrew Butz – Director, Client Success & Partnerships, Kroger Precision Marketing

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Turning Insights to Action—and Impact

(06:27, 08:37)

• Sammi Zola: Emphasizes the necessity for speed: “The faster we can get to those golden nuggets of what the consumer wants…the faster we can move to shift our plans. And now that we’re moving at the speed of light, we need to do it faster than ever.”
• Pete Fox: Shares that Haleon staff now view AI as collaborators in the process of insight mining, helping to sift through rapidly proliferating data for what truly matters.
• Andrew Butz: Proposes a shift in mindset—“I actually like ‘insights to impact’”—focusing not just on action but measurable business outcomes for brands.

2. What’s Driving Renewed Urgency in CPG?

(10:08, 13:46)

• Evolving Consumer Habits: Four time horizons for insights—macro trends (aging populations), mid-range drivers (e.g., GLP-1 weight-loss drugs influencing purchase), and real-time, highly local triggers (out-of-stocks, sudden environmental changes).

• Media Fragmentation & AI: Digital disruption has shifted the path to purchase—80% of consumers don’t follow a linear path. AI is now often the starting point for discovery, with up to 50% of new journeys starting with AI tools. Influencers now rival or surpass traditional brand creative in purchase impact.

  "Our most important customer is likely going to be the LLMs [large language models] instead of humans in the future." — Sammi Zola (15:11)

3. The New Workflow: AI, Agent Monday, and Automation

(16:41, 24:36)

• Monday as “Insight Blitz”: Data validation, alignment with Kroger, and prepping for rapid consensus to unlock action for the week. AI accelerates routine diagnostics and automates the initial layers of analysis.

• Agent Monday: Both a real product and a running theme, Agent Monday is an AI-driven insight engine from 8451/KPM that pre-populates week-over-week performance stories, moving the team quickly from raw data to “why did this change?”.

  • Example: With Agent Monday, the Haleon team gets brand-level diagnostics by Sunday evening, freeing up Monday for higher-order strategizing.

  “Instead of the questions coming from my sales counterpart saying, ‘Hey, what was our change on Toms last week?’ [it becomes] ‘What do you think is driving the household decline that’s taking place in Red Meyer division?’” — Pete Fox (17:39)

• AI Tool Ecosystem: Tools like Inquiries (AI-assisted survey builder) and self-serve analytics platforms are democratizing insight access and analysis, allowing faster, granular targeting and campaign adjustment.

4. Actionable Data vs. Noise

(21:35)

• Actionable Example: Allergy remedies (Flonase, etc.) are extremely seasonal. Instead of just “pollen index is high,” actionable data means “pollen will spike in these 4 states in the next 4 weeks”—enabling dynamic messaging and merchandising precisely where and when needed.

• Propensity Models: Predictive (vs. demographic) targeting is now essential. Marketers must pivot from broad swathes to precision, behavioral, and moment-driven audiences.

  “If you are a marketer and you haven’t shifted from demographics to behavioral, I mean—what is income? Income is not a propensity to buy—it’s simply capacity.” — Sree Rajagopalan (23:04)

5. The Role of Retail Media Networks (RMNs) and Real-Time Optimization

(24:36, 33:01)

• KPM’s huge first-party data combined with conversion APIs (e.g., with Google) enables brands to adjust campaigns in real time—suppressing wasted impressions by removing households who have already converted, and ramping up relevance for the next-best prospects.
• Brand/retailer collaboration: As tools and AI enable more granular transparency, brand and RMN teams are integrating to focus on impact holistically.

6. Real-World Case: Allergy Season Optimization

(28:29)

• By combining years of market data, store-level sales, and loyalty insights, Haleon localized its allergy season activation—timing media and shelf presence at the division (region) level rather than “national average.”

• Results: Flonase grew 8.5% in treated divisions vs. 2% elsewhere, outpacing both category and regional benchmarks, and crucially winning share with the core Kroger loyalist.

  “It was also a 6% delta between the Flonase brand and the category at the same exact divisions…We grew segment share, market share, households, basket penetration, and household penetration. And the best part was, we grew with the core Kroger loyal.” — Pete Fox (30:28)

7. Data, AI, and the Death of Silos

(34:28, 43:39)

• Merging retail data and media activation is about eliminating silos—not just in technology but in team structure and KPIs.
• Self-service, cross-platform retail data is driving cost efficiencies (controlling frequency, audience overlap), and strong incrementality.
• AI isn’t just an enabler but a stakeholder: “LLM agents are legitimate stakeholders in the process.” — Peter V.S. Bond (39:41)
• Internal transformation: Legacy workflows were for a human audience; now, storing and certifying data for both people and AI agents is required, ensuring future accuracy and the ability to re-use validated data.

8. The Future: Where AI and Insights Go Next

(47:02–49:46)

• Pete Fox: Envisions going beyond just faster “knife-sharpening”—"We're building a chainsaw," prepping data and insights for seamless, secure, and trustable access, including for “audiences” that are increasingly AI-driven.
• Sammi Zola: Predicts the next leap will be full adoption of AI-driven audience solutions and closing the loop by learning more from LLMs about what's working and feeding it back into advanced audience profiling.
• Andrew Butz: Emphasizes test-and-learn culture, especially to overcome privacy and regulatory uncertainties in a health-centric (and therefore highly sensitive) ecosystem.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Insights to Impact." — Andrew Butz (08:37)
• "Our most important customer is likely going to be the LLMs instead of humans in the future." — Sammi Zola (15:11)
• "Agent Monday" – Highlighted throughout as a metaphor and practical tool for automating and accelerating actionable insights (16:41 onward)
  • “Do you want an Agent Monday for CPG guys?” — Peter V.S. Bond (21:06)
• "Retail is detail." — Pete Fox (39:55, 51:03)
  • Coined as a mic-drop, emphasizing the necessity for granular, local, and precise insight work.
• Recurring T-shirt Quotes: The episode turns several pithy lines (“Retail is detail,” “Media is media,” “Profound Brian”) into running jokes about instant wisdom for the industry.
• "If you operate in silos, you get siloed outcomes." — Andrew Butz (42:31)

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Essential Timestamps

• 06:27–08:17 – Intros: Roles & definitions of insights/impact
• 10:08–15:34 – Speed urgency; data overload; AI-driven discovery paths
• 16:41–20:10 – Week-in-the-life for category management; rise of Agent Monday
• 21:35–24:01 – Actionable data in activation: allergy/flu triggers, predictive modeling
• 24:36–27:19 – The new role of AI/automation; democratizing advanced tools
• 28:29–32:28 – Flonase allergy campaign case study & outcomes
• 33:01–38:46 – Self-serve, retail data, incrementality, future of audience construction
• 39:41–46:35 – LLMs as stakeholders; breaking down functional silos; future-proofing data
• 47:02–49:46 – Forward look: where AI and actionable insights go next

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Conclusion and Takeaways

• Action speed and precision are everything: The best brands and RMNs are engineering to move from insight to action (and impact) in record time.
• AI is here—already shaping the present, not the future. Tools like Agent Monday are fundamentally shifting how work gets done, letting people focus more on strategy and less on routine analysis.
• Collaboration + Integration wins: Internal silos are rapidly falling—those who reorganize for cross-disciplinary, real-time impact are pulling ahead.
• Details matter (retail is detail): Hyper-local, situation-specific insights can generate large incremental gains when the organizational machinery is built to respond.

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Final Mic Drop Quotes

• "Agent Mondays. AI has arrived. It's going into decision making, evaluation, even innovation." — Sree Rajagopalan (51:03)
• "Retail is detail." — Pete Fox (multiple mentions; the new mantra!)

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For further connection, see the episode’s show notes for guest links, plus references for Helion and Kroger Precision Marketing.

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This summary captures the key themes, highlights the wisdom (and wit!) of the conversation, and preserves the energy of the original episode for industry professionals who want all the substance in a fraction of the time.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Pete Fox, categories manager at Helion.

[B]

Hi, I'm Sami Zola, director shopper marketing for the Mega Channel at Helion.

[C]

Hi, Andrew Butts. I'm a director at KPM leading our personal wellness and baby vertical. You are listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.

[D]

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. Set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Sree Rajagopalan and Peter V. S Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. I am your incorrigible co host, pvsb, father of future pro golfer Nadia. Sure, she's seven, but she could be on the lpg. It's going to happen. I mean, if Shri can have two famous pop star daughters, I can have an LPGA player.

[E]

It's the fast ticket to a college sponsorship, I think.

[D]

It is. That's what I'm told. Very good, Scott. I also moonlight as head of industry engagement at Flywheel Omnicom's Commerce Accelerator division. Today, SRI and I are in the Queen City, otherwise known as Cincinnati. Some call it Porkopolis. That's an old name. Used to be the Meatpacking City. And we are actually at the home of 8451, where Kroger precision Marketing is based. And we're so grateful to our dear friend Brian Spencer for making this space available and helping us bring today's guests together for this conversation. My co host, he is the father of pop stars Rhea Raj, who just signed a record deal with Universal Music Group. Congratulations to Rhea and of course, Katseye's very own Lara Raj. Sri Katseye was on the stage at Coachella with the K Pop Demon Hunters. God, it's killing me. He's also the Chief Revenue Officer at Think Blue Consulting. I call him my BFF and my ride or die. He's the man known as Sri Sri. What's going on, man? So much stuff. Did I hear something? Did I hear there was another award given today to the Cat's Eye Band nomination?

[E]

AM Award. So we'll be in Vegas mid May. Hopefully get to watch the nominations for best new artists, similar to the Grammys. But Peter, we're in Cincy. What a fun trip this is turning out to be. I mean, we kicked off the Ignite CPG conference with FMI's keynote this morning. We've already recorded an episode here at 8451 KPM. We're doing a second one and Brian's Invited us to stick around for Cinco de Mayo.

[D]

Cinco.

[C]

Cinco de Mayo.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

And I said, where do you. Where do you.

[E]

Where do you like the french fries at Cinco de Gallo.

[D]

Oh, that's where you get food for Cinco de Mayo.

[C]

You go to Cinco de Gallo? Yeah, I do.

[D]

A little cheeseburger. And those fries in the paper bag, those are good Francais.

[E]

Fryo. Something like that.

[D]

I know.

[E]

Yeah, that's Cinco de Gallo.

[C]

Cinco de Gallo. I like it.

[E]

He was trying to school me what Cinco de Gallo is.

[D]

You're just a Luddite. Shriek.

[E]

I'm not done, Peter. I wasn't done.

[D]

Oh, sorry.

[E]

I went to Mad Tree Brewing.

[D]

Did you forget we are going to Mad Tree.

[E]

We're actually going to record. Record an episode from a pub.

[D]

Turns out the VP of Marketing and Madtree is a fan of the CBG.

[E]

Guys, be fun. This is a fun 24 hours.

[D]

I'm loving our time here.

[E]

Then I gotta go get geeky in Chicago.

[D]

I know.

[E]

On AI on shopping with Coca Cola.

[D]

All right, Shree, as always, thank you for joining me. I'd like to remind our audience, Please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Heck, you can even ask Alexa play the CPG guys and she'll do it for you. But if you're on Apple or Spotify in particular, please, please, please leave us a numerical rating. Our favorite number is five, but hey, it's up to you. Five. Five is good. Five is good. Doing so honestly, it helps make our podcast more findable by industry contemporaries of yours. So please take the time to do it because there are a lot of people out there looking to be both educated and entertained. And we hope that we fill some of the void where we. We look at the CPG guys. Kind of like a craft beer. We're not going to have 100% share of stomach, but if we're near a, then we've accomplished our goal. We just want to be part of the collection of podcasts that entertain and educate you in the process. Okay, enough of that. Let's get to our guest. Today we are joined by three people sitting at one of the most important intersections in modern commerce, brand strategy, consumer insights, and retail media activation. Together, they're going to take us inside how a leading global health and wellness company, Halion, and one of America's most data rich retail media networks, Kroger Precision Marketing, are building the operating models that let brands move at the speed of the shopper. What a novel concept from Helion we have Samizola Us, commercial media director, and Pete Fox, category strategy manager. And joining them from Kroger Precision Marketing is Andrew Botts, director of client success and partnership. Sammy. Pete. Andrew, welcome.

[A]

Thanks. Thanks for having us.

[B]

Thank you for having us. I'm a frequent listener, so I'm excited to be here.

[C]

Likewise. Thanks for having us.

[D]

Oh, we love it when people listen to our podcast. That's great. Our own mothers don't listen to our podcast.

[E]

So this is not true. Who are the first. Who was the first to download an episode? Your mom? My mom?

[D]

I don't think she listened to it. I think she downloaded it.

[E]

Just so we checked the box.

[D]

I think everyone here would agree the stats matter. So you've got to download the podcast. Please download the podcast to our audience. Go to the digital show notes. This episode we have put the LinkedIn hyperlinks to each of our guests in there. Also to Halion's corporate site and to KPM site so that you can multitask. Everybody likes to do that. You can learn a little bit. You're out for a jog on a Saturday morning. You listen to this episode. You hear the dulcet tones of Andrew's voice. Like, I want to check this guy out. Let me see who he's, what he's all about. Just click the hyperlink in the digital show notes. They're all there. All right, let's get to the questions we've prepared for you. I'm really excited about today's conversation. This will go to all. I'm going to start with Samy and then we'll ask Pete and Andrew. You can round it out, but cute story. I want to know a little bit more about who you are, what your roles are, and what from your perspective, turning insights into action means from the role you occupy. Sammy.

[B]

Yeah. Thank you. So, a little bit about me. I am sitting in the US Shop, our director role, but I spent the last five in our Commerce center of Excellence. So really setting standards for all retail media networks, retail agnostic, and really focusing on what's the future, how do we invest, what do we change, et cetera. And for me, I think the most important thing about like the fastest insight is we get and we should work very closely. Insights in Shopper or Insights in media in general is the faster we can get to those golden nuggets of what the consumer wants or, you know, something happening in the industry, et cetera, the faster we can move to shift our plans. And now that we're moving at the speed of light, we need to do it faster than ever.

[D]

Pete?

[A]

Yeah. Hi, thanks. I'm Pete Fox. I'm in category management leadership here at Halion which for those of you don't remember you might notice by your some of our iconic brands. Flonase, Tom, Sensodyne and we. So my role, if Sam is looking for golden nuggets that would make me the miner I have been. I have been in the CPG world for about 20 years and the last 15 have been directly calling on Kroger in an insights analytics type role. With 8451 pretty much open on the computer all day long along with their other syndicated data and other information. I have a different slightly lens on this is that as part of our Helion AI and advanced technology goals, I was part of the pilot program for our copilot rollout and I was one of the first 300 people out of 5,000 to get a premium copilot license. And in the last 180 days I am in the top 2% of prompting volume for all of Helion globally.

[D]

You couldn't make top one? Is that what.

[A]

Okay, honestly my goal for next year is to be in like the bottom 25% and to have the agents be doing that work for me.

[D]

Oh, that. Good answer. Good answer. Andrew, welcome.

[C]

Thank you. Andrew Butts. I'm one of the directors here on our client success and partnerships team and I have the privilege of working with our partners like Kalion and others in the wellness space at Kroger, helping them grow. At the end of the day it's about driving growth for brands and we've got a great toolkit of assets here to help them do that.

[D]

Oh, and insights to action, what does that mean for you?

[C]

I actually like insights to impact.

[D]

We're taking it to the outcome level. Not just the outcome, not just the activation.

[C]

If we're gonna drive growth.

[D]

I think he stumped the CPG guys.

[E]

We already found our profound. Brian, we can't rechrome the title. I'm sorry.

[D]

Okay. Sorry, we can't. Sorry, Brian.

[E]

Now all of you are going to want to know what the heck that means.

[C]

Say more.

[D]

Sammy knows about the T shirt sri. She knows about the T shirt quotes. Oh yeah, I think she. No, I meant the when we print. When we print quotes on shirt. I think she may have come armed with some pithy statements for later. We're going to hold you to that, Sammy.

[E]

So if you guys want to solve for all the listeners as well what is profound, Brian, you're going to have to go back and listen to the episode from two weeks ago, which is also with Kroger Precision Marketing. But I'm not going to give away the plot.

[D]

If you listen, it's a nugget in there. It's a, it's a nugget. It's going to mine. I know that much.

[E]

All right, let me welcome all three of you, Sammy, Pete and Andrew to the CPG. Guys. Thanks for joining us. And I'm going to kick this off with Pete and Sammy. Question for both of you. Keeping a pulse on the consumer has always been table stakes in cpg. Of course, that's what it's all about. We save a common person at the end of the day. But there's clearly a renewed urgency around speed right now given all the volume challenges in the industry. Pete, maybe I'll ask you first and then Sami, I'll come back to you. Pete, from a category strategy standpoint, what's really driving that in Samy, talk to us about media changing consumption behavior, which is really adding fuel to that fire. So P first.

[A]

Sure. Sri thanks for the question. I would say from our lens we are tracking across like four different time stages. One is we have the long range macroeconomic things. Like right now, if we have one in three households that are 55 or older by 2035, it's going to be closer to one in two. So we have to watch how those behavior things happen over time. But it's not happening daily, it's happening gradually. Then we have other things that are more mid range, like the evolution of what's happening with GLP1s and how those shoppers who are now on on those medications are changing their spending habits, what they're not buying anymore, what they're buying instead, symptoms, side effects, etc. Many of our brands can help address. But then we also have the immediate stuff of like how is our innovation tracking what we're doing versus competition. But then we have also those immediate moments that require genuinely deep diving into what's happening. Whether it is a, when our, our, our competitor went out of supply, where did that volume go? Is this going to be long term? How do we address it and immediately send those signals to everywhere it matters. So it's not just saying hey, sales team needs to know this for their own benefit and Kroger needs to know it so that they can lean in with us as needed to support and supply, but also to make sure that signal goes straight to our brand teams on their, on their media piece, the supply chain team so they can either change production or address production. So it is about the getting the data is fast and everywhere you can accurately and timely validated sources. So that is really kind of the key on why that timeliness is getting so demanding. And on top of that we have had the exponential growth of data availability. So in addition to saying hey, we have all the top line data we've always had access to, but now if you wanted to get down to the modal price of a buyer that happens to be within six miles of a Costco at a Kroger store that's a a Hispanic family of three or four, you could get to that level. But it's that balance of when did we hit the floor and you have

[D]

the rabbit hole with it.

[A]

When do we get the rabbit hole and does it matter and is it going to really change things? So that's a little bit of why that intensity of data and understanding the speed of where those nuggets are really drivers and when it's just more information.

[D]

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[B]

Yeah, I would say from a media consumption there's four things I think about. One is the path to discovery has completely changed. I mean we've long talked about there's no linear path to purchase, right? I think 80% of people don't follow, you know, a linear path to purchase. It's really A loop. Now people can go from discovery to purchase in seconds. And so the scrolling on social and LLMs and like doing your research, the scrolling, the doom scrolling. Exactly. That is fundamentally changed. It's no longer we don't talk about the future of search, we talk about the future of discovery. The second thing is consumers expectations have changed. Like everything's on demand and everyone demands personalization. Long gone are the days of like one creative, one message fits for purpose. So if you're not relevant and changing that creative and that messaging in the right place in the right time, then you're obsolete. I would say the third thing is we can't get away from it. Whether it's algorithmic or agentic commerce. Right. It's here to stay. So people are shopping differently, they're not engaging in the same way. I think last year I did a presentation and it was one in four people started their AI like started their discovery path on AI and I think it was two weeks ago I sat in ascendant and someone used the term or the stat. 50% or more of people are starting their path of discovery on AI. So that fundamentally changed how we have to address like our most important customer is likely going to be the LLMs instead of humans in the future. And I think the last thing is trust has changed. Right. So that's forced us away from brand led creative to really that influencer and creative conversation. Like that's we've even seen it in our own marketing. I mean we've done testing and we've seen skyrocketed ROI versus brand forward.

[D]

It's amazing to me how someone we've never met who lives a world away from us can have a profound impact on a decision to make a purchase more than all the creative that you could see on a pdp.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. I mean it's as far, it's all ages too. I mean my mother in law called me and she was like I bought my first thing on Instagram and I was like congratulations, welcome to the club. You know, like I mean it was an influencer and she just, it spoke to her for her daughter's wedding. It was great.

[D]

All right, so Pete, this is for you specifically. I want to understand how the job of category insights has actually changed in the last year at Haley and I think you kind of talked to this but I want you to double click. I want you to double click down walk us through a day in the life. You know what are your weekly insights workflow look like And I'd really like to Know, because you open the door to agents, how you're seeing those helping you do more than you've ever done before and do it better than you've ever done before.

[A]

Yeah, great question. So I will say the first part of the week is always a blitz. We Monday morning, Monday morning is a Monday, but it honestly doesn't even start Monday. It starts the prior week. And because in order to make sure that what we're reporting on on Monday is accurate, because we don't want to spend our money trying our Monday connecting with our Kroger counterpart and trying to explain what the difference was between their number and what they're seeing, our number. So it really does take a lot of work to try and make sure that our data is right, that our product hierarchies match theirs. Because the minute that the custody of data changes from 8451 into our ecosystem, we have to still have those ways to refresh it. So if an item moves from one category to a different commodity within that category, then it just starts to create divergences. Yes. And it gets really bad over time, especially if there's a restatement of older data, whatever. So your, your year to date number changes and nothing changed from the prior week except it two quarters ago.

[D]

The term restatement still gives SRI and me hard palpitations.

[A]

It does, but honestly. So the great news is with advanced technology and a lot of the tools that we get from 8451, whether it's an API of their kind of KPI fax or our use of things like Power BI, what used to take a lot of time building the data, refreshing the charts, adding the storylines is almost as quick as uploading whatever the new refresh into the cycle is. All the visuals are pre populated. We know the trends. We even have the, you know, the scripts and the COPE and the agents that can help us build out the commentary because, because of tenant issues, you know, Kroger is not in our power BI system, you know, so we have to still find a way to translate that to, to our category manager counterparts. And so how AI has really helped me in that is that it allows us to get past that first round of diagnostics with almost no work. So we go from having like a pile of data to knowing what brands, what packs, what key items, what sub commodities, what geographies, what stores drove that change. And then thanks to some 8451 tools, they recently pushed out something called Agent Monday. And Agent Monday is a AI agent that will push the Consumer diagnostic second layer out to us on some of our key brands. And so we'll have the benefit of instead of waiting till Monday to see the results, to then start digging in to say, was it households, was it, you know, repeat, was it whatever. It's already in our inbox, honestly, by Sunday night. And so, and so instead of the questions coming from my, you know, sales counterpart saying, hey, what was our change on let's say Toms or Advil last week? The question says is what do you think is driving the household decline that's taking place in Red Meyer division? So the conversation immediately elevates and also to that point about the digging for mine, you know, you know, mining for gold. We're actually trying to get to that a lot faster. We have a map of where to go look thanks to tools like that. And so that has helped. Where we also have some of that benefit with other AI or other tools is that that's not the only source of data that we have to look at. So in addition to 8451, we also know what happened at Meijer, what happened at Walmart this week, Amazon. So we have to start trying. So when it takes all of that initial diagnostic of what we did and frees us time to either do more competitive work looking at maybe other brands, green spaces and more strategic lens, so it freeze that time to put a more comprehensive story together.

[D]

So Pete, if it's in your inbox on Sunday, does that mean you miss watching the Real Housewives of Rhode island, which comes out on a Sunday night, by the way, my latest guilty pleasure. Yes, thank you. The audience is giving me big thumbs up. If you thought Jersey was crazy, you should see Rhode Island. I'm sorry.

[E]

I watched every episode of the first edition of Beverly Hills.

[D]

Oh, you did? You've watched it all.

[E]

This is 15 years ago.

[D]

Okay, but you haven't kept up. Okay. You should.

[A]

Peter, we're going to be honest. We're a big Bravo household ourselves. We're really more in the below deck summer house space ourselves.

[D]

But here's the big question. Should you guys Bravo Con? Should we be at Bravo Con?

[A]

Yes.

[D]

Go to Cannes.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

At Bravo Buy and tube possible for next year.

[A]

Absolutely.

[D]

Yeah. Thank you. We're going to talk to all of the entrepreneurs there who are selling merchandise. Guys, Sri. I'm sorry, I went off on a tangent.

[E]

Bad with the last name Bond, though. Don't you want an Agent Monday for the CPG guys?

[C]

Yeah, I do.

[E]

All right. What an awesome name. Agent Agent Monday. Sammy, this one's for you. As your team hunkers down on building out activation plans, what separates out purchase data that is genuinely actionable from data that's more informative or noise in the ecosystem, then can you give us an example or two of a moment where the distinction really mattered for you?

[B]

I think the easiest one, you know, we have household brands that are very seasonal. Flonase, Theraflu, Robitussin. And information that's just reporting the news would be like, hey, pollen is indexing right now. Or, you know, it's heavy, allergy index, or it's heavy, you know, Tamiflu prescriptions are up. Like, that's just reporting the news. But something that's actionable is, hey, and you, you were speaking to this earlier, Pete, is, hey, not only is it pollen index or, you know, the flu index up, it's up in these four states. And in the next four weeks, we think it's going to spike here because that, what that allows us to truly do is shift our creative, our messaging. And even in some cases, we've done triggering merchandising in different display ads, like digitally and creative in those markets. So you're not just saying be prepared for the season, you're saying pollen or, you know, flu is spiking here, like by now. Right. So to me, that just that that gives you something actionable. Right. That we can tangibly take away. The other thing that I would say is something that we've shifted, like using those insights is we've done propensity models. So we, instead of broad targeting for consumers, we think we know we're actually doing more precision targeting for, like, what we actually can predict will happen. It's that predictive engine. So those insights allow us to do that and reach people in the right time at the right place with the right message.

[D]

Yeah, I absolutely love you talking about that because propensity is so important that if, if you are a marketer and you haven't shifted from demographics to behavioral, I mean, what is income? Income is not a propensity to buy. It's simply a capacity to buy. So I think you hitting on the propensity being very important. Drew.

[C]

Yeah, I was going to say just building off a couple things. So since the insights show up through Agent Monday, we no longer have Sunday scaries. So that's really, really exciting. So Pete can show up. He has plenty of time to watch all of his Bravo shows on Sunday night and then show up with this wonderful report in his inbox that helps decode Bravo report all the Household division units, like all the things that help us activate more effectively. So to Sammy's point where it's, you know, a seasonal index for pollen or cold cough and flu or those types of things, we can deploy insights in a very targeted and effective way to maximize the investments and, and drive the business forward.

[D]

All right, Andrew, you've been, you just chimed in there but you've been very patient and I want to draw you into this conversation very directly. I think we all know that Kroger Precision Marketing sits on top of one, if not the richest first party data sets in retail. Yes, thank you very long. That was that. Yeah. My answer is yes, you are correct. How is artificial intelligence specifically changing you and your clients abilities to deliver faster, more relevant insights? And how are your brand partners seeing this actually manifest in practice?

[C]

Sure. Love it. Thank you. So we hit a little bit on Agent Monday. So as we think about some of the insights capabilities that we bring to bear, Agent Monday is a report across brands that shows up in our Catman's inboxes and Sammy's inbox to help decompose what happened the week prior. And it gets down to a geographic level. We look at household trends, competitive trends, category trends. So that's just an automatic, you know, report that our clients get. And to Pete's comments before it really trims like the analysis side of it. So instead of mining we're like maybe like panning a little bit more so we're not going too far down to dig it out. And then it enables us to take those insights and activate in real time with what we're doing. So whether we're running something through a DSP partner in a live capacity, whether it's trade Desk or a new partnership with Google through DB360 where we can integrate those signals and optimize in real time to sales, to households, to units, we can take the insights to activation to then drive that impact.

[E]

Great.

[D]

And you did mention, you said Google and you mentioned the trade Desk. It's very clear that having ecosystem partners again is about democratizing the data and making sure that brands have the most availability to apply that data to create actions that lead to outcomes.

[C]

Yes, absolutely. And I would say the other side of that too. And the panel said on it a little bit, there's an abundance of data, there's no shortage of data, knowing what to do with it. And then I would also say having the operational rhythm and structure as a business to connect insights to shopper to brand to category, all of those things working harmoniously Together is a really critical component.

[A]

It, yeah, I was going to chime in too, is that some of the advancements that we're seeing out of the different 8451 products are great in the sense of the AI. So another product they have is their. Is called their. Their inquiries product. And it's a, it's a short form survey type tool that you can hit a group of households up to, you know, 10 questions if you want to. And if you're not necessarily a qualitative person, you could ask AI to help you and it will literally tell you what your business question is and it will pre populate you with a different group of questions that have been already kind of vetted by their team based on other things and you could modify from there. So it's allowing kind of this democracy of the data to be everywhere so you don't have to wait for your insights team to build a whole survey group or whatever else because you already have their team helping you after you've already had this first layer of AI to help you build it if you don't know where to start. And I know that there's a lot more work that's being done on the stratum product. And as they move closer to a more power bi level, it'll only be easier to see AI being applied there via whether it's language models like Copilot or other agent type work there.

[B]

I think the theme that like you're both hitting on is that we used to spend so much time doing the work instead of strategizing. So now we can do the work like actually strategize and take the next

[D]

step so much faster going from 80% working and 20% strategizing to the inverse.

[B]

I mean, hopefully in the future we could like go to a meeting, set our agent to do something, come back and half of it's done.

[D]

How do I keep SRI from using an agent to replace me as the co host? That's my biggest authority in the works. I know. That's why I'm worried about Sri Lanka.

[B]

It's called Agent Bond.

[D]

Oh, Agent Bond project.

[E]

Agent Bond Monday. Agent Bond taking it. Agent Monday Bond. Agent Bond Monday. Agent Bond Monday. That's what I like.

[D]

I'm coming for you, Sri.

[B]

He just likes you as a personal. It's the emotional connection.

[E]

Ripe. This one's for you. So with the volatility in the economy, volume growth being a challenge for pretty much every large CPG brand of scale and consumer behaviors changing by the hour, what are the most surprising shopper insights your team has surfaced in the past year or what surprises you? And critically, how did you get the Helion organization to act with you as you brought those insights to bear?

[A]

Yeah, great question. So one of the insights we really got to this year and it wasn't necessarily there was a brand new insight, but it was how we applied the insight. So the allergy business for us is a pretty big business. And unlike with the Kroger footprint, allergy season is not universal. It's not like the super bowl where everything happens on the same date. You have some divisions down south that are selling swimsuits and you have some divisions on the same week selling snow shovels. And so it is very hard as an enterprise for Kroger to do everything for everyone. And we've sort of over, over time had more of this. We're going to work to the traditional allergy season and as a result of that we had some of our biggest, most important divisions that were kind of being cut off this pre build of the season. And you had some other divisions out west that were really big for the Kroger enterprise as well that were being cut short of the allergy season. So we really went and dug really deep on this one. And using both, you know, over seven or eight years of allergy incidents detail coming out of IQVIA, we complemented that with 8451, you know, Circana measures so that we can basically show when these early and late divisions are, are breaking. You're losing share because the message was wrong at the wrong time to those shoppers who maybe unlike a cold and flu shopper is much more just in time. They're waiting to see a tree bloom before they're buying allergy products as opposed to a cold and flu shopper which might be buying in October knowing that someone's, someone's going to get sick. So it was really about how do we reframe, reframe the overall plan and to bring it forward. And so we had a big allergy summit with the Kroger category manager here. As a follow up we had a quick, fast follow with the Kroger digital team. We applied all different, you know, loyalty data, you know, search terms so that, that the digital team could roll out basically a different like campaign ahead of the season for the rest of the full enterprise at those key divisions to really, to really drive the message. And I heard you guys like numbers.

[C]

Do you like numbers?

[D]

We, we're kind of, we, we like numbers. Show drop, drop some knowledge on me.

[A]

All right, so the Flonies brand at Those divisions grew 8 and a half percent. Now it had been a pressure brand over time compared to 2% at the divisions where it did not materialize. And it was also, so it was a, you know, six point differential here between just the divisions who did and the divisions that didn't. We also had a 6% delta between the Flonase brand and the category at the same exact divisions and which was also a 4% gain compared to the rest of market in those same geographies. So these are same geographies that are also competing when they're the same allergy conditions in the same markets under the same pressures. And we grew segment share, we grew market share, we grew households, we grew basket penetration, we grew household penetration. And the best part about all of it was we didn't just grow with households that were like promotional heavy households. We grew with the core Kroger loyal. And this is the shopper who we know is in the store, you know, a couple times, you know, a week, a couple times a month spending a large percent of their basket dollars there. And that has been our goal is how do we drive that conversion from the grocery side of the house which gets the traffic on the perimeter to the OTC healthcare side, you know, week on week to really drive that volume. So for us it was a big success. We brought that forward to the organization after the fact 2.3 and said how can we bring this forward to not just take the Kroger team resource but the brand team resource and apply that same concept to our brand messaging. And I think Sammy keyed up a little bit earlier today.

[B]

Yeah, I mean I was going to say that's kind of our like our job, like we found something successful and to be honest we didn't, didn't do that much advertising around it at Kroger it was all the data and how we activated as much as we could from a merchandising etc standpoint. So bringing that back to brand and they're doing trigger targeting, et cetera, like that, table stakes. But how can we truly fundamentally use this data and use the insights to have more impact when we actually execute? Because a lot of people say like oh, it's more targeted, it's more expensive but if you have more quality reach and more quality output then you're going to have more sales and more share.

[D]

Let me remind our audience that today Sri and I are speaking with Sami Zolin, Pete Fox from Helion and Andrew Butts from Kroger Precision Marketing Andrew, this one's for you.

[E]

Beyond data delivery, how are retail media networks like Kroger Precision Marketing evolving their role to help brand partners optimize? You know, two weeks ago we had a discussion availability of real time data. So that's what I'll ask you to. And how do you see that relationship between the brand team and the RMN changing as the tools are getting smarter by the hour? Now we have an agent Monday.

[C]

I love it. So let's talk. I think the Google partnership is a great example for us to start with. Google is one of the first partners that we've deployed conversion APIs with. So as we think about our ability to execute and optimize in real time, whether it's new buyer suppression. So if your goal is only household penetration and new buyers, and we know that somebody bought, then a KPI of the campaign should be no longer targeting people that have already purchased. And so our ability to do that within that ecosystem, optimize to sales, whatever it is like that's part of that ecosystem. Now with Google, as we look to deploy cap use, the conversion APIs with other DSP partners, that will continue to expand from a tactical perspective. And then as I see kind of like where the long term goes, it's bringing that automation from something like an agent Monday all the way through into the activation side of it. Now there's going to be some pipes that have to get connected and a whole bunch of tech work that gets done within that. But the ability to create kind of that marketing engine and that marketing ecosystem I think unlocks a lot of value and potential for brands.

[D]

All right, Pete and Sami, this is to you. I'd really like to know, Sami, particularly as you sit across a broader responsibility, how are you modernizing your approach to how you leverage retail data in your planning and activation process with all of Halion's retail partners?

[B]

Yeah, well, this has been quite the journey, I will tell you. A couple years ago we simply activated from a shopper marketing standpoint, there were obviously some brand dollars being spent with retail data, but no one was really connecting that path. And I think think the beauty to me, and I've said this to both of these guys sitting right here, retail media and retail data, it's the same stuff, I should say. Not gonna use a different word as, as traditional media.

[D]

It's the data thing that retail media is. Media.

[B]

Yeah, it's just media.

[D]

Heard that somewhere.

[E]

Is there a T shirt with that

[D]

quote on this room that could be on a T shirt one day. But anyway, go ahead.

[B]

But at any rate, it's the data and AI capabilities that's that connective tissue. So we have shifted and this has been a journey, but we've shifted self service right on platforms where like all of our minds are creating data partnerships against cross platforms. And I'll use trade as an example. The first iteration of it was truly just saying, hey, can we bring all of our retail data audiences into one spot so we're not hitting everyone a million times? How do we control for frequency, greater audience, you know, more effective. But then it became, well, how incremental is that audience to our national. Right to our 3p. So we did, we did do a test and like Kroger was included and others were included and Kroger had up to 30 to 40% incremental audience versus what we had. So now we're on this journey of how do we bring together what are we doing when we just buy, let's say KPM to drive Kroger, but how are we using those retail data audiences to create incremental audiences and bring it all together? And we've seen when you go self service, the cost goes down. We're creating less media ways because we're controlling for frequency about across platforms.

[D]

Very important, isn't it to be to control because your goal is to optimize and efficient, make more efficient your media spend and when you accidentally over saturate an audience across multiple platforms, that, that doesn't serve your purpose and it's just not good for your investment.

[B]

Yeah. And I loved that test because we literally could control. We had maybe 1% overlap between the audiences, which was amazing. It was huge. And we saw immediate like we had consistently only like 4/4 of ROI growth for like specific.

[D]

Phenomenal.

[B]

Yeah, it was great. It was awesome. Anyway, so I, I see the future of that integration has to come together. You have to have holistic planning, you're going to have audience mapping and we're even working through right now how do we pull retail data, whether it's Stratum or AMC or Luma, all of them, into our integrated marketing. So we could do audience profiling and audience sizing across all of those retailers. So it's a journey, but it's happening.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Pete, anything to add to that?

[A]

Yeah, I think Sammy actually teed me up here pretty well. So I think the one piece that changes how my job changes in order to enable that, and not just for today's dashboard, but it's for tomorrow's AI use, is that pretty much every category manager or Someone like myself across has historically been building all of their insights with the intention of a human audience. So the reframing of how we collect, how we capture, how we store, certify, qualify and make safe that when Sami's team down the road uses Copilot or another AI driven tool, that that's a certified correct answer and that you're not getting an echo or something else that is out there that says this is, this is, this is the source of truth. This is a real answer that has been validated, certified, not just accidentally pull something off SharePoint that looks kind of like what it's looking for, but it's an eight year old study, you know, or something, so that will help do that. And part of this is also, to my point earlier, is the democratization of the data access for everyone who needs it as fast as possible and be AI or prep for AI, that's key. So that is how the modernization has happened. And that does exactly. Sammy's point is how do we then look across those retailer networks, whether it's data and to be able to merge them together. You know, one of the hardest things we try and do is try and figure out like our category attributes across different retailers. Especially because private label is masked using

[B]

iri want a massive clean room.

[A]

We need it at the highest level of like our category. There's really no information there. But it's not until you get down to what is the difference between a centrum female buyer who's using a tablet or a female or a female buyer who's doing a gummy or versus a, you know, to try and really say this is what's driving the category category. It's not that the whole category is acting one way. You have amazing pockets of growth and pockets of pressure in the same exact moment. But unless you're spending that extra time to really add that piece. And my good Birdie Bad's gonna love a shout out here. But retail is detail. And the problem with the retail's detail is nobody wants the T shirt. There you go for sure.

[B]

Come on.

[C]

Are you saying we got like 10 T shirts out?

[A]

Nobody wants to know how you built the watch. They just want to know what time it is. And so there's that balance of saying, hey, look, we have to get at the time and have it be ready, but it has to be right at the right level.

[D]

So I, I love it. Sree think about that. LLM agents are legitimate stakeholders in the process. They have to be accounted for and have to be considered in what do I know it is. Yeah.

[E]

Although now my mind is thinking retail is detailed.

[A]

Retail is detail.

[E]

Cincy Pete.

[D]

Cincy Pete. Okay, there we go. Yeah.

[E]

He is home.

[A]

Brad.

[B]

Brad at the office.

[E]

Since he is home.

[D]

Sammy's like, I can't believe I got

[A]

scooped around a little.

[B]

So proud of him. Honestly, that's.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay, good.

[E]

We got two words out of this, Peter. We got profound Brian. And now we have retailers detail.

[D]

I like it.

[C]

Go ahead.

[E]

That'll be used like crazy. Andrew, did you have something to add before I ask you the next question?

[C]

Love that. I just had to build on Sammy's commentary around kind of the incremental reach and the opportunity of the retail audiences and all of the benefits in terms of audience duplication, reach frequency. What Sammy shared specific to Handland is not a unique dynamic. Dynamic that we see often audience incrementality and overlap when we bump that up in trade Desk or other DSP partners is generally a minimum of 40% incrementality. In some of the categories particularly in kind of the beauty and wellness space and OTC we see even higher up to like 70 or 80%. So there's a really meaningful opportunity to engage all of the households and the kind of the insights and opportunities particularly within the self service space in a really productive way.

[B]

I was going to add one more thing because you said something about LLMs. I think the future and journey of that is like we're using jellyfish which is the like I would. The easiest way to explain it is that like an LM listening tool that's going to change the path for how we're doing everything because like we had some. An initial study that came out that said one of our products had a different sensorial and flavor profile than our competitors and they were winning. So it informed our innovation and now we're setting KPIs for like how we're changing whether it's condition or seasonal awareness within the LLM. So I think that is also a journey we're on in that changing.

[D]

I've referenced on this podcast many times research that Northwestern did with mit. Then they, they sufficiently prove that almost everything you get out of a very expensive and time consuming focus group you can probably just by getting just reading all the reviews that are publicly available on numerous marketplaces and it's, it's just true. And getting those kinds of nuggets of insight is, is very valuable to brands being able to pivot and evolve where they're going. Sree

[E]

Andrew, we'll bring you back into the next one From Kroger Precision Marketing's vantage point, what does the gap look like between where I would call the North Star CPG brands are today in terms of insight to action, speed taking it? That would be real time data that you all are making available as well as the Agent Mondays. And then where are the, what's, what's the separator between those brands? And then just everybody else love it.

[C]

Great question. And we, we touched on this a little bit earlier and I do think there, there is a very clear divide between those that are doing this well and there's always opportunity. It's a very evolving space and those where like have some opportunity to figure it out. It, it truly comes down to how like teams and systems are structured within the CPG environment. And so if you operate in silos, you will get siloed outcomes. Your KPIs are not necessarily al. Your strategies aren't necessarily aligned. And so when we bring kind of the full vertically integrated structure together, that's where we see impact happen. I would say probably three to four years ago was the first time sitting on kind of the side of the desk where I started to see brands really start to like re engineer and integrate for this new world. And those are, you know, some of your very, very progressive organizations, like very large marketing organizations and others have learned from that and are starting to follow suit. But I do think we've got break down silos and we've got to get really crisp on KPIs and what the appropriate outcomes are.

[D]

So breaking down the silos is perfect for my question before Cherie closes this out. Sami and Pete, traditionally consumer insights and media were very siloed entities. How are you breaking that down? Creating some connective tissue and what, what's the outcome that you will deliver?

[A]

Yeah, and I think part of that is not necessarily the shared data, but it's the shared vision of what we're trying to accomplish. And the data is only part of the strategy. So it's the validator sometimes or it's the discovery sometimes, but it's really saying hey, what are we trying to accomplish? Whether it's share or attention or whatever the different measures are that we're trying to do. For individual piece it's about the collaboration, but then again it's the speeding up the time that it takes for anybody to get to an answer. So in the past we'd have a big meeting and we would come out with this big work list and then it might be a couple weeks before you finally got back to everybody. With all the tasks now, copilot, facilitator, probably have everybody's, you know, action items already in their calendar. By the time the meeting's over, you've got all this other actions going on and we can get back to some of this information much, much quicker than we can so that we can spend more time on the strategy and less time on the report to get to the strategy. And that's really the collaboration that goes along with the way our business works very well together, both in sales and then corporately. But and then also to our point is how do we unlock a little bit of that governance between the departments so that it doesn't take Sammy to ask a salesperson what's the latest on the sales data? She already has access to it already.

[B]

Yeah, I mean I think that's a great point. I think long and shopper, at least I called it the tripod. Sales insights and shopper. Like we always had to be in lockstep together. But what I've seen over the last several years is that, that we've been breaking down silos. Like even with our media center of excellence, we started inviting in our insights and analytics teams to our meetings to say like, hey, how can we bridge the gap? Or like how do we make this tighter? How do we learn what you know faster? How do we work together to build that marketing ecosystem, if you will, so that we aren't, we don't have to like tap each other on the shoulder that we already know the work streams. We just need to know who we have to go to and who we have to collaborate best with. Because honestly, obviously if you do something on your own without insights, it's nothing. I love that. Insights to impact. I think that's truly together one build

[C]

on this too, because I think brands have a responsibility to do this, but then partners on the retail side have a responsibility to do it as well. And so some of the structural shifts that we've made here in bringing essentially all of our commercial businesses together under one team. So when Sami and Pete talk to their team at kpm, we have their interests in mind across the insight side of it, the media and loyalty as well. And then can connecting that bridge back into the Kroger ecosystem as well. So I look at that as a very productive flywheel that we're building here for partnership and growth.

[D]

Sree, close this out, would you?

[E]

All right, I'm going to ask all three of you to take turns and kind of give us a little bit of a forward looking view. AI has come up so many times during this conversation, including Agent Monday. So as you start thinking about the intersection of AI and insights from the seat you sit in, the role you are in today, what do you think in the next 12 months will be pivotal for you as you think about AI and insights? So maybe we'll start with you, Pete.

[A]

Yeah, great question. So I would say what's with the future view for me is saying, you know, there's always been that adage, right? If you're going to chop down a Tree, the first 75% of your time is sharpening the knife. And a lot of the work that I think both myself and a lot of other organizations are trying to do out there is to say we need to, to stop for a second on the sharpening the knife and let's go put together a chainsaw because that's what we're building for efficiency and for to be able to lift a different data set and drop it in the same, into the same model and it just spin out. You know, we're, we're clear in a forest and that's what the goal of speed decision really gets to. I mean it's always been a long time, we've had a long time now where you could be, you know, in a, in a store, on your phone and have a power BI data set there and you could see how a nine is pouring there. But it wasn't always to the where point point where someone could say how does this item compare to that item and tell me what the household differentials are, what whatever those metrics are that's going to be the difference maker. And although our brands do have slightly longer lead times, we do have slightly longer times between our, our planogram resets compared to let's say a DSD type store delivery, grocery manufacturer. Like we still have to bring a lot of that insight still back in under, under safety of like our, you know, privacy. We still want to be working on how do we work with Kroger Pharmacy to get information about like how can we model out a GLP1 household and what does that mean? But, but there's guardrails that we still have to do. So some of that assembly, that chainsaw is understanding the safety mechanisms of both the data, the governance and then so that it doesn't actually end up in, you know, the wrong retailer's presentation and whatever those are. So there's a lot of work that supposed to be done to prep the data for the audience and to verify that it's going to be Something you could stand on and trust the accuracy of that information.

[B]

Sammy okay, I'll take it in a different direction. I think about, I think about the future of how we build audiences and how we reach consumers. So there's a lot of, I'm just going to call them, whether it's propensity model or AI driven audiences. And everyone, I would say a lot of people are dipping their toe but no one's like really dove in and said, okay, just take it and run with it. Like I know we did some testing and, and those AI audiences do really well at converting and finding the right people. But we haven't just said carte blanc,

[D]

just go, you haven't just pulled the trigger.

[B]

We haven't just pulled it. How much exactly. So I, I don't know if it's in 12 months, but I do see a future of how are we leveraging all of these AI audiences and then pulling it back, whether it's in a stratum or amc, et cetera, to say like what are we actually learning about those people? And so we can inform the future. So I do think there's like a huge shift that's going to happen eventually. I just don't think everyone's quite ready for that.

[C]

Andrew, last word. I love it. I love Sami's commentary there with like maybe not in the next 12 months, but I think the like the testing and iteration that's necessary to get us there are definitely things that we can do in the next 12 months. There are things that are less like privacy compliant concerns and things like that when we get into like health information, but we can do some things in the short term. So I think the test and learn side of it is going to be really critical over the next 12 months and look forward to bringing that to life with our partners at Halion.

[A]

Brilliant.

[D]

Well if you're like SREE and me and you heard some pretty provocative thought leadership kind of out of our guests today, fear not. Go to the digital show notes of this episode. Click on their LinkedIn profiles, you can learn more about them. And while you're there, click on Helion's corporate site and KPM's. You can learn more about these incredible industry leading organizations. Shreya 3 this is a great conversation. What's your big takeaway?

[E]

Two things. They're very short but they should be obvious if you've listened to this episode. The first one is Agent Mondays. AI has arrived. It's here. It's going into decision making, evaluation, even innovation from what I heard. So that's one. And the second one by popular demand by Cincy. Pete. Retail is detail.

[D]

Retail is detail.

[C]

Yeah.

[E]

End of story. That's a mic drop moment.

[D]

I think it absolutely is. Let's not drop our mics though. That's a figurative mic drop moment. We don't want the reverberation. We're recording this. It's going to send everything into a tizzy. Yes, Sri, for me, it's just embracing this change and figuring out how it's going to help us collaborate, do more than we've ever done before, do it more accurately and do it in such a timely basis that we're not just looking in the rearview mirror. We're in the moment and we can adjust exactly how we're making decisions and it can have a direct and a meaningful impact, not just, gosh, I wish I'd known that six months ago. That's what's valuable to me. Pete, Sammy, Andrew, thank you for joining us today. What a great conversation. Really appreciate it.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[C]

Thank you

[D]

to our audience. This community does not exist without all of you. You engage with us, be it in person, at conferences, as we're walking along the street in Tokyo or wherever, certainly online and through email. And we are really grateful to you and all of our partners that enable us to do this and share what we hope is both educational and entertaining. We really want to thank our 44,000 plus LinkedIn followers. They come from all walks of the community, from retail, from cpg, from agency, from Tech Stack Partners. The ecosystem is very broad. Please follow us on all your social media platforms, not just LinkedIn. We are on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. I don't think we're on MySpace anymore, Cherie. I think that's. That's gone. But we had. We really do appreciate it and thank you. We look forward to having you join us on the next episode of the CPG Guys podcast. Goodbye. Foreign. The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPG Guys LLC or the individual author, hosts or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGuys LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPT Guys LLC do not represent the views of their employers. Or the entity they represent. CPT Guys LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.